Source: Bigstock

Sometimes it’s beneficial to break down a bad argument. To dissect it, deconstruct it, disassemble it. Get to the heart of why it stinks.

To put it more crassly, a dog turd looks bad enough on your front lawn. But bring it in the house, chop it up, examine it under a microscope? It looks much worse.

Like that JD Vance argument for spreading fake cat memes. I ridiculed it a few weeks ago, but just generally. I’d like to go into a little more detail this week.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, the would-be veep declared:

The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.

Okay, beyond the point I made a few weeks ago, that fake stories are the last refuge of people who don’t have real stories in their favor, and if you have real stories of immigrant crime—and heaven knows there’s no shortage of those—you’re only weakening your case by relying on fake ones, what other takeaways can we find in Vance’s comments?

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people…”

Vance uses the term “American media” a half-dozen times in that one interview.

“I say we’re creating a story meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it…. We created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this story and the suffering caused by Kamala Harris’ policies.”

Note that he’s not saying “liberal media” or “mainstream media.” He’s admitting that the left-leaning press is still relevant, that it’s still the “American media,” and if the “American media” doesn’t focus on a story, the public might remain unaware of it.

Wait there, Moonshine Jimmy…I thought Andrew Breitbart’s entire raison d’être was to make the “liberal media” irrelevant, to relegate it to a tiny bubble to be consumed only by a small number of Oberlin feminists, oygenflaygin Jews, and Frisco faggots (i.e., people conservatives will never win over, so why even fret about ’em)?

Don’tcha recall? Conservatives were gonna make their own media and it would be COOL and EDGY and it would completely displace the fossilized “legacy media.”

How many times have rightists retweeted some conservative icon who proclaims that the “lamestream media” is now irrelevant? “Nobody reads the NYT or WaPo anymore! Nobody watches CNN! The lamestreams are dead, too stupid to climb into the grave where they belong.”

Well, not according to Vance. According to the banjo duelist, the “American media” is still so powerful that whatever it ignores remains unknown to the general public.

By gosh, you mean the Breitbart/Roger Simon/Wilks Brothers plan to launch a network of conservative news sites, some with purposely nonpartisan names (“Big Hollywood,” “Big Government,” “PJ Media,” “Daily Wire”), failed?

That’s not where the American public goes for info?

The mainstream press is still so powerful that it’s ethically excusable to spread fake stories if it puts your issue in front of the producers at CNN and the editors at WaPo?

Wowza…Breitbart failed like a mutherfucker, huh?

Remember, his Obama-era dream was that the lamestream press would be staked through the heart by conservative news sites run by “citizen journalists”—the only honest journalists around!

And where are we now, more than fifteen years later? Trump’s VP cedes that the mainstream media still runs the show, and Breitbart’s beloved “citizen journalism” has become Twitter memers with names like Catturd and GroypNazi88 who peddle fakes to an audience that, though huge on X, is in the actual bubble, a world far more insulated than that of WaPo readers and CNN viewers, who, leftist though they may be, actually step away from social media occasionally to traverse the real world.

Vance’s “I lied so that the American media would pay attention” excuse is the exact same excuse, word for word, as Breitbart’s after he botched the Shirley Sherrod story in 2010. To briefly recap for the Zoomers, Breitbart had received a video from a “source” that appeared to show the Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the Department of Agriculture, Shirley Sherrod (a black woman), proudly recounting to an NAACP audience the time she discriminated against a white farmer purely on account of his race.

However, the video sent by the “source” was incomplete; it abruptly cut off in the middle of Sherrod’s tale. Breitbart, knowing nothing of black culture, was too dense to see that Sherrod was in the middle of a redemption tale. This is a huge thing in black churches; you recount your sins in vivid detail and then celebrate how Jesus cleansed you of them.

Part 1 of a redemption tale is always ugly. “I dun da crack, I stolded my auntie’s weffare checks to buy more crack. I dun drunk da Ripple and did sex in da alley for da crack. Satan was eatin’ mah soul alive…but then JEEZUS dun freed me, hallelujah!” (cue fat women dancing in the aisles while shrieking in tongues).

Breitbart didn’t wait to see part 2 of the video. He went on Fox News showing only part 1. And Obama, at that time as frightened as anyone that this “conservative media” and “citizen journalist” thing might catch on (yep, he’s as dumb as the rest of ’em), overreacted and fired Sherrod.

And then part 2 of the video surfaced, and just as I’d predicted at the time, there was Sherrod with the payoff: “Satan had put racism in my heart, but then I realized my sin and repented, and I helped that white farmer, I gave all the aid I could to that white farmer, and today we’re best friends.”

And there was the white farmer himself, saying, “God bless Shirley Sherrod; she saved my farm.”

Humiliated, Breitbart had to think fast. He declared that his plan all along was to trick the media, to pretend to attack Sherrod in order to “draw media focus” to the real story: the racism of the NAACP audience members, who applauded her discrimination tale before she revealed her anti-racist epiphany.

Only problem was, the NAACP audience didn’t applaud—not once—as I pointed out in a column at the now-defunct site I was writing for at the time. But Breitbart’s minions congratulated him on spreading a lie to fool the media into reporting a story they wouldn’t have otherwise covered.

Isn’t it fascinating that rightists haven’t evolved at all since then?

“Breitbart knew that sometimes you need to create a fake story to get media coverage of a real story! He’s a genius.”

“Trump knows that sometimes you need to create a fake story to get media coverage of a real story! He’s a genius.”

As a fan of symmetry, I’m pleased by the continuity. Lie, get caught, claim the lie was necessary to trick the media into covering a story.

The problem is, that kind of thing only works on the worshipful minions who support you anyway. All the general public hears is “I lied.” Hence why Breitbart’s empire never did displace the MSM, and why Vance’s lie didn’t boost the Trump ticket in any measurable manner.

Breitbart’s grand dream of making conservative sites the go-to mainstream source for news as “citizen journalists” shamed their degreed counterparts with scoop after scoop wasn’t born in sin…but it sure as hell died in it, thanks not just to Andrew’s lack of fealty to the truth but to the antics of his top “citizen journalists” like James O’Keefe; even Breitbart himself called out O’Keefe over his “love yacht” plot to humiliate CNN, and while I can’t betray a source, I’ll say that O’Keefe’s firing from Project Veritas was an action that any prudent board would’ve taken in response to malfeasance.

To be clear, I’m not trying to defend the mainstream media. I broke my cherry with the MSM 33 years ago, late autumn 1991, helping CBS News “finesse” a story of questionable veracity. And I’ve dealt with hundreds of reporters since. Some are honest, some not. But you’ll notice that the dishonest ones never say shit like “Sure, I lied, but for a purpose.” Most MSM journos are smarter than that. It’s the thing “citizen journalists” could never master: how to be clever when caught in an untruth.

Because rightist “citizen journalists”/memers know damn well that they’re writing for a bubble. When you’re not relying on sources or facts to begin with, why bother worrying when you’re exposed? You’ll only gain new followers from the publicity.

That said, Vance is correct in spite of himself. Yes, mainstream voters do still read newspapers and watch TV news. Legacy media has not been supplanted by memers; the mainstream media does still largely drive the news cycle. And the “why” of it mainly comes down to competence (that includes competence in the face of a screwup).

Now, to what extent will the legacy media help determine the outcome of November 5th? I don’t know. But I do know that Trump, Musk, and MAGA are staking everything on the notion that memes can win elections. To echo a recent column of mine, one of the theories being tested on November 5th is the Breitbart (now Musk) theory that “citizen journalists” (in this case memers) can drive the news.

If Trump loses, it’s time to bury Breitbart figuratively to match the literal. Andrew’s dream was a rightist version of an old Rooney/Garland film: “Let’s get all the neighborhood kids together and put on a show in the barn!”

Let’s build our own news empire to rival the MSM.

Let’s make our own movies to rival Hollywood.

Let’s become journalists ourselves.

If we do that, we can save the nation!

If Trump loses, that means the barn newspapers didn’t win the election, the barn movies didn’t “change the culture,” and the barn journalists didn’t know their ass from an inkwell.

If Trump loses, it’s time to burn the barn. Shove the memes and the Shapiro/Boreing movies and the viral fakes inside, bolt the door, and reduce it to ash.

That doesn’t mean surrender to the MSM or Hollywood. It means wise up, embrace competence over “Catturd,” and grow up; move past the childish competition for likes and views online, and stop encouraging the conservative “bubble films” that only exist to fatten the wallets and egos of con artists like Jeremy Boreing.

If Trump loses, he’ll yell fraud, as he did in 2020. And the rightist bubble-boys will support him and run stories so phony even Dinesh D’Souza will blanch.

Many of you will want to replay the 2020 aftermath. You’ll want to burn the Capitol.

I, on the other hand, will want to burn the barn.

In a few weeks we’ll see if anything burns, or if anyone learns.